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Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, January 22nd, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What A Day, the show demanding that we return to the good old days when times were simple and hotel bathrooms had doors. Yes, doors, opaque doors that close, not sliding doors, not frosted glass, not no doors at all, doors. [music break] On today’s show, let Lisa Cook, the Supreme Court cast out on President Donald Trump’s efforts to fire the Federal Reserve Governor. And open your mailbox. There’s a bill. Another bill. That’s also a bill, but what’s this? It’s a crisp, wax-sealed, handwritten letter. But let’s start with Trump. Good news! The United States is not purchasing Greenland, nor is it taking the island by force. I think? Maybe? After meeting with NATO allies at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday morning, quote, “we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic region.” He added, quote, “based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st.” If you’re wondering what a framework of a future deal means, Trump can totally explain it. Like he did to a reporter on CNBC on Wednesday. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] It looks like we have pretty much a concept of a deal. 

[clip of unknown CNBC news reporter] A deal of ownership? A deal–

[clip of President Donald Trump] Well it’s a little bit complex but we’ll explain it down the line but the secretary general of NATO and I and some other people were talking and it’s a kind of a deal that I wanted to be able to make. 

Jane Coaston: Wait, that wasn’t helpful at all. So here’s what we do know, and it’s not very much. According to the New York Times, the deal, such as it exists, involves Denmark giving the U.S. Sovereignty over pockets of land in Greenland on which America could build military bases. Now, you might be thinking, doesn’t the U S already have a military base in Greenland? Yes, it does, the Pituffik space base. So as far as I can tell, all of this bullshit threatening NATO allies and sending mean letters to Nordic leaders led up to a deal where we can build military bases in a place where we already have a military base. Seems worth it. But this walk back, climb down, taco experience because Trump always chickens out is probably good for Trump because like we’ve been saying this whole time, Americans do not want to buy Greenland. Here’s CNN’s Harry Enten on Wednesday comparing the purchase of Greenland to another super unpopular Trump stance. 

[clip of Harry Enten] Take a look here. Trump’s net approval rating on the Epstein files, look at that, just absolutely awful. 38 points below water. But any try to buy Greenland is somehow even more unpopular. Look at this, it’s 40 points below water. There is barely an issue out there that’s worse for Donald Trump than the Epstein files, but any attempts to buy Greenland or use military force on Greenland, which even polls worse than this, is one of them. It is arguably the most unpopular thing that Donald Trump can try to do is mess with Greenland. 

Jane Coaston: And it’s not just Greenland. We’re one year into Trump’s second term in the White House and his polling numbers are subterranean. So to talk more about how dangerous and unpopular Trump could be, I spoke to Dan Pfeiffer. He’s the host of Crooked Media’s Poller Coaster podcast and co-host of Pod Save America. Dan, welcome back to What A Day. 

It’s great to be here. 

Jane Coaston: Trump’s polls are bad. He is more than a dozen points underwater on average, according to the New York Times polling aggregator. Where does that put him historically? 

Dan Pfeiffer: In a very, very bad place. Um. I guess this would be the best, easiest to understand benchmark is, he is about four to five points further underwater than Joe Biden was at this point. Mmm hmm. And there is this like debate about how we benchmark Trump. Are we benchmarking him in the end of the first year of a term or at the end of the fifth year of a term? Either way, his numbers are very bad. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, that actually gets me to another question, which is that I’ve been thinking about second-term presidents. Now, obviously, Trump is a relatively unique example because he was voted out and then voted back in. That’s not very common. But how do second-term presidents tend to fare, both in polling and in the midterms? What is it about second terms that are so tough for presidential administrations? 

Dan Pfeiffer: It’s the lame duck problem, which is voters start to see them as lame ducks. They look weak. The party begins to think about the future, the post, you know, the, whatever the post white house future is of this party, and they begin to separate themselves and the only recent example where Democrat, where the incumbent president did well on their second midterm was Bill Clinton, and that’s because the Republicans impeached him, uh, for a reason that the American people did not agree with at the time, but in every other case, uh they suffer mightily. And part of the reason why that is, is it’s not just that they suffer in the midterms, it’s that when a second term’s president numbers go down, they almost never come back. Because what brings them back, the reason why Clinton can lose a million seats in ’94 and bounce back, or even Trump can lose a bunch of seats in 2018 and bounce back is, you have the forcing mechanism of the reelection campaign to sort of re-sort things in terms of partisanship, where even if you’re down on the president of your party in the midterms, now when you’re forced to choose between them and somebody else’s party, you come home. And there’s no reason to come home here. 

Jane Coaston: Trump has never been a capital P popular president, but what’s interesting to me is that Trump is polling poorly on the issues, not only that he was polling positively on a year ago, but the issues he was elected on, namely immigration and the economy. What does that tell you? 

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, it says two things. And I think we should take them separately. On immigration, Trump ran on a mass deportation plan. But if you were just watching the news, watching TV ads, watching the conversation on social media, what you would believe is that Trump was running to secure the border and to get criminals, gang members, and drug traffickers out of our country. That is not what he is doing. That’s not what people see he’s doing. What he is actually running a mass deportation plan is getting people who have been in this country for a very long time, who pay taxes, who work out of this country, and voters do not support that. Even large swathes of Republican voters do not support them, so he is violating that promise. More importantly, he told people that he would lower their costs. He didn’t hedge it and say, I will curb inflation. He didn’t say, I will fight to try to lower costs. He said, elect me and your grocery prices, your housing prices, your healthcare prices, your gas prices will go down. Those prices have not just not gone down, they have gone up, and they have gone up because of his tariffs, and people see that. Like when Barack Obama was running for re-election, even in 2012, if you asked voters who was responsible for the state of the economy, a majority would say George W. Bush, not Obama. You ask that question right now in the Wall Street Journal poll, and a 58% say this is Donald Trump’s economy. Because of his tariffs, people now explicitly blame him for high prices, and he’s paying a huge price, pun intended, in the polls for it. 

Jane Coaston: And among the groups, I think one of the most important groups that he is paying the price with in polling are independent voters. Independent voters who favored Trump in 2024, independent voters are an increasingly large population and critical to wins in the midterms and in the next presidential election. And after they favored him in 2024 they are down on him. What do you think that that says? 

Dan Pfeiffer: It’s I think it you can see this and you see it with independents. You can see it with Latino voters. You can see it with working class voters of color. You can see it with the young voters, particularly young men. These are people who were not in love with Trump. They’re not MAGA voters. They don’t own MAGA hats. They probably don’t like a lot of what Trump does or says, but they made a bet that he would lower their costs and he has not fulfilled his side of the bet and so they’re abandoning them. 

Jane Coaston: What gets me, well what annoys me. 

Dan Pfeiffer: Fair enough. 

Jane Coaston: Is that the polls tell us that voters do not like Trump on pretty much any of his issues. But when you talk about Congress, some polls are finding that Americans support Republicans in Congress more than Democrats in Congress on multiple issues, including immigration. So like Trump is negative on immigration in polling. Republicans are positive on immigration in polling. Why? 

Dan Pfeiffer: This is the bright, glaring warning sign for Democrats, which is politics typically acts as a seesaw. One side goes down, the other one goes up. That is not happening here. Democrats are not trusted. Our party approval is at near its lowest level in history. We are seeing, even now, more new voters are registered as Republicans than Democrats. We have not given people a reason to trust us on those issues. The only issues where we tend to poll better are the ones that are at our absolute core democratic issues like healthcare and abortion, climate change, and all the rest, Republicans have an advantage. And, you know, it’s interesting because Democrats are winning on the generic ballot when you ask people, would they vote for Republican or Democrat? Which tells you two things. One, it tells you that they are looking for a check on Trump. They don’t think all Republican government is working. So they will even take a party that they don’t fully trust just as a bulwark, if you will, against Trump. And two, the fact that that generic poll lead is so small, it’s about four points. There are a bunch of voters we could be getting because of Trump’s approval rating, but are not because they don’t yet have faith that we are strong enough to be that check on Trump. 

Jane Coaston: It seems in some ways, like his team is sort of aware that he is unpopular. And you can see that with the housing policy, and I’m gonna put that in quotes because it’s not a real housing policy. They’ve been talking more sort of about affordability, but Trump himself is far more interested in really unpopular policy ideas, mostly in foreign policy like buying Greenland. Here’s my big picture question. And this has been something I cannot get over. The Trump administration is not trying to sell any of this to the American people. There is no like broad effort to like make this Greenland thing make sense to everyday Americans. You worked in a presidential administration. Part of politics is trying to sell policy to people. Why are they not selling policy to normies? 

Dan Pfeiffer: They don’t believe that anyone who didn’t vote for Trump matters. This is true in his first administration, this is true now. Their belief is, it’s their political theory is fire up the base. Now, during the campaign, they made very explicit efforts to reach out to less engaged voters, so a lot of the groups that I just mentioned, who might be open to Trump. They were very aggressive about that. But Trump’s never on the ballot again. Even he has admitted that fact. So they are trying to do nothing other than speak to the base, and part of it is you now have an entire generation of Republican politicians and political operatives who have been raised in a hermetically sealed right-wing news bubble. So they don’t even understand the tools you would use to do it. You’re they’re not even aware of how other people consume information and they frankly don’t really care. 

Jane Coaston: I think my last question for you is, he does not care about the things that most Americans care about. He does not seem to care that most American’s don’t like what he’s doing. What worries you the most about second term Trump? A Trump who seems simultaneously like a lame duck, but also totally unshackled from anything anybody cares about. 

Dan Pfeiffer: Like, there is a massive and concerning paradox here, which is he has never been weaker politically, and he’s never been more dangerous substantively. Right, he is he is willing to push every limit, break every norm, but he has sent 3,000 ICE troops to Minneapolis because of a bizarre sort of right-wing conspiracy theory around fraud, as if it had never been investigated, even though it had been. 

Jane Coaston: And as if he doesn’t love fraud. He loves fraudsters. 

Dan Pfeiffer: Yes, I mean he’s pardoning them left and right And so I think that you don’t want to run into a wounded bear. And he is a very wounded bear right now. 

Jane Coaston: Dan, as always, thank you for joining me. 

Dan Pfeiffer: Absolutely. Thank you, Jane.

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Dan Pfeiffer, host of Crooked Media’s Poller Coaster and co-host of Pod Save America. Hey, thanks for listening. If you’re enjoying what you’re hearing, hit that subscribe button and leave a five-star review. And if you’re more of a visual learner, watch us on YouTube. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Mark Dion] I want to respond to the fact that our communities feel anxious and fearful. They see this action as unpredictable and a threat to their families. 

Jane Coaston: The mayor of Portland, Maine, held a press conference alongside other city leaders on Wednesday to address the increase of immigration and customs enforcement activity. I said in a press release that it officially launched its latest endeavor, Operation Catch of the Day, across Maine this week. I have to assume the person who comes up with names for these operations is making like $500,000 a year. The agency boasted that it’s already arrested some of the, quote, “worst of the worst.” Portland Mayor Mark Dion was calm, cool, and collected Wednesday when telling his constituents he respects their right to protest. But Portland City Councilor Wes Pelletier didn’t mince words. 

[clip of Wes Pelletier] I want to be really clear. This is a war of terror that’s being waged on our city by the federal government. 

Jane Coaston: Which is funny, because Department of Homeland Security Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement quote, “under President Trump and Secretary Noem, we are no longer allowing criminal illegal aliens to terrorize American citizens.” Makes sense. We have ICE to do that. 

[clip of Justice Brett Kavanaugh] If this were set as a precedent, it seems to me, just thinking big picture, what goes around comes around, all the current president’s appointees would likely be removed for cause on January 20th, 2029 if there’s a Democratic president or January 20th, 2033. And then we’re really at at will removal. 

Jane Coaston: On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh mulled over the potential consequences of letting Trump fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. A majority of the justices didn’t seem satisfied with Trump’s argument that he could boot Cook over mortgage fraud claims, and the Supreme Court appears poised to hand President Trump an L on the matter. By law, presidents can only fire Fed governors for cause, a safeguard meant to protect the bank from political pressure. What a novel idea. But the White House says it clears that bar, alleging Cook improperly listed two primary residences on mortgage paperwork. She denies the allegations, and there have been no criminal charges. Several justices signaled major concerns that approving the firing and setting that as a precedent could seriously undermine the Federal Reserve’s independence. This as Trump has repeatedly attacked the central bank for not cutting interest rates faster. He argues that it should act more aggressively to drive down borrowing costs and juice the economy. I argue that we should not do that because I do not like economic crises. Today, former special counsel Jack Smith is expected to appear in front of the House Judiciary Committee with the lights on and the cameras rolling. Smith is one of Trump’s main enemies. He oversaw two major federal cases against him, one about attempts to overturn the 2020 election and another accusing Trump of mishandling classified government documents after leaving office, i.e. he kept top secret files in his Mar-a-Lago bathroom. Back in December, Smith spent nearly nine hours in a closed-door deposition with Republicans. In the released transcript, Smith said he could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump led a criminal scheme to overturn the election and was, quote, “the most culpable figure involved.” I can already hear Trump muttering. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Deranged Jack Sick Smith is a sick son of a bitch. 

Jane Coaston: You get it? You get how Trump added sick as a middle name? You know, because he’s sick. It’s very clever. The new testimony comes as Trump is trying to block the Justice Department from releasing Smith’s final report. Trump’s lawyers argue the report would, quote, “irreparably harm him,” our poor porcelain president. If you’ve been texting and emailing and tweeting and DMing your elected representatives to, you know, do something about all of this. First, good. But second, it might be nice to also write some letters. Not just to members of Congress who seem to have forgotten that they have jobs, but to your friends and your family, and I don’t know, your former college roommate who now lives in Thailand for reasons you’ve never really understood. That’s because handwritten letter writing is reportedly experiencing a resurgence with adults and children alike. Pinterest’s 2026 trend forecast found searches for snail mail gifts have surged 110%, while interest in pen pals is also way up. Hands-on hobbies like letter-writing, typewriter clubs, and TikTok communities devoted to calligraphy and wax seals are driving a revival of old-school communication. Nostalgic, sure, but these activities also offer a way to unplug, slow down, and create more deliberate, meaningful connections in a world that’s anything but. Plus, you can write really mean things in letters, just like you can in an email to elected officials. And that’s the news. [music break]. 

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate new data showing the political leanings of different NFL positions, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how defensive backs and running backs are more likely to be Democrats while kickers, punters, and long snappers are more likely to be Republicans, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and so in short, the less actual violence you face in the sport of football, the more likely you are to be a Republican. Interesting. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Emily Fohr and Chris Allport. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Ethan Obermann, Greg Walters, and Matt Berg. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]